Tuesday, 22 May 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #186 - Cabbageboy, "Genetically Modified"

Some time towards the end of the last thousand year Reich, Si Begg was Cabbage Boy and was making music for Ninja Tune like this. It has the same kind of kiddy-pastoral feel as Mr Scruff, good-time bonhomie fun sampledelica. The kind of stuff that would appear in the soundtrack of Spaced, which was of a similar mindset; the late, late extension of already late adolescence at the End of History (tm).

This music somehow has a bit of a Bohemian sting though. Perhaps this is from hanging about on the same roster as Cold Cut, or perhaps it's the flipside of the Y2K party bug. I think it rests really on the choice of sampled speech - "Vended Food" and "Rhythm and Blues Angus Steak House" have a sense of dystopian satire, only a taste. Nothing I could really flesh out over a paragraph. Or maybe it's the Boards of Canada recycling of memories/vicarious experience into a gloopy cycle of worn magnetic tape, the ghost on a childhood holiday in the machine?

"Hey Hey We're The Monks" has bent some folky chant to its indomitable will, which gladdens me. There's a bit of Oprah on there too, in parental guidance mode too, which again seems quite Nineties: it feels a bit like another battle that was lost a few years ago, the parental paedophiliphobic tide of censorship that carries away much but leaves mainstream hate porn attitudes largely untouched. And the Blue Jam ensluggening of the human voice; "So, do you like Suede because I think they're verrryyy gggoooodddddd?"

"Planet" has a nice funky scowl and echoing harpsichord noises. Then there is something that sounds midway between Cantonese and Welsh going on in "Donkey Kong", over a sweaty workout of a drum & face blend. "I:Cabbage" has a Western string theme fanning out across the desert.

"As the World Rages" is the key text (yeah, I know, so sue me!) on the album - "Lock up the door/Hoping that history doesn't exist anymore/And as the world rages/We become more and more like dancing guests on the ballroom floor" and there's tinkling party's-over piano and then alarm noises. There's not that moral panic in dance music any more, is there? It's all Eurotwunge reach for the lasers business. Not like in one of my days...